Lawmakers unnerved at how easily the State Board of Education can override law want to make it tougher for school districts to follow Douglas County’s lead and get waivers of teacher-licensing rules.
Legislation that passed the House Education Committee on partisan lines Monday would require a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority of the seven-member board of education for waivers of state law.
“Huge debate goes on here – a law has to make it out of the House. It has to make it out of the Senate. It has to be signed by the governor,” said Rep. Debbie Benefield, D-Arvada. “To say four individuals elected to the state board could turn over 101 individuals, I think it’s pretty scary.”
Douglas County’s success in November at winning a waiver so it could operate its own licensing program for hard- to-fill teacher positions “identified a gap” in the process, Benefield said.
Her bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Sue Windels, D-Arvada, was sent to the House on an 8-5 vote.
Opponents of the bill said it could stifle school districts’ creativity in solving teacher shortages and intrude on local school boards’ powers.
“It seems to me it’s not a far stretch to infringing on local control,” said Rep. Victor Mitchell, R-Castle Rock.
Jane Urschel of the Colorado Association of School Boards said the bill would “put one more obstacle” in front of school districts.
The legislation would not have affected Douglas County’s waiver, which passed with only one no vote. And Benefield said she was not opposed to that district’s proposal to train and license teachers in special education and foreign language.
But “it identified a gap in the current status that could allow very meaningful statutes to get waived very easily,” she said.
State board member Evie Hudak, the only one to vote against Douglas County’s waiver, said lawmakers should consider putting a time limit on waivers of state law. Some charter schools have asked the state board for waivers stretching 30 years, she said.
Benefield’s legislation specifies five years.
The committee also approved a bill that would create a more sophisticated formula for measuring individual students’ academic improvement over time, instead of a snapshot of cohort test scores. The state has been trying to approve such a formula for years.
“This bill is an opportunity to finally get it right,” said its sponsor, Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-954-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
